Focus Dates ‘A Monster Calls’ For October 2016

Focus Features announced it will release the Juan Antonio Bayona-directed A Monster Callson October 14, 2016. So far the pic has the date to itself. Based on the award-winning children’s fantasy novel by Patrick Ness, (The Chaos Walking Trilogy), A Monster Calls centers on a young boy who attempts to deal with his mother’s illness and school bullies by escaping into a fantastical world of monsters and fairy tales. Ness wrote the novel based on an original idea by the late Siobhan Dowd, and he and illustrator Jim Kay won Britain’s prestigious Carnegie Medal and Greenaway Medal in 2012, presented to the year’s best children’s literature in the UK. Ness is adapting the screenplay from his novel. A Monster Calls will be produced by Belen Atienza (The Impossible, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Orphanage). Executive Producers are River Road’s Bill Pohlad and Mitch Horwits, Participant Media’s Jeff Skoll and Jonathan King, and Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Co-Chairman Patrick Wachsberger.